Dad acquitted of murdering baby

Lombard man guilty of lesser charge

A DuPage County jury deliberated almost eight hours Tuesday before finding Bruce Keintz not guilty of murdering his month-old daughter, but guilty of reckless conduct in her February 2001 death.

Keintz wheeled around and hugged crying family members after the verdict was announced just before 10 p.m., said Dan Brown, one of his attorneys.

Keintz, 34, of Lombard will be sentenced Jan. 8 and faces a maximum prison term of one year. He had been charged with fatally shaking his adopted daughter Alexis.

In closing arguments, defense attorney John Donahue said prosecutors wanted the father to pay for Alexis' death even though it was unclear why she died.

"We don't know what caused her death, and there is a divergence of opinion," said Donahue, who put Keintz on the stand in the three-week trial to say the family's 90-pound Airedale stepped on the infant just before she stopped breathing.

Judge George Bakalis gave the jury three options: guilty of murder, not guilty of murder or guilty of reckless conduct.

Prosecutors told the jury that medical experts said the dog could not have caused Alexis' death by stepping on her chest and throat.

"Alexis had the great misfortune of being Bruce Keintz's adopted daughter," said Assistant State's Atty. Helen Kapas. "The murder weapon was his hands, hands just as lethal as a .357 when you weigh only 6 pounds."

Assistant State's Atty. Tim Diamond said Keintz "concocted stories about what happened, until he could make up one that would match her injuries."

Alexis lived for a week at Lutheran General Hospital's pediatric intensive care unit, Park Ridge, before dying in February 2001.

The Cook County medical examiner's office ruled her death was a homicide due to shaken baby syndrome. The syndrome refers to infants who have been shaken violently, causing often-fatal brain damage.

Lombard police said Keintz, a Web page designer, several times changed his account of what happened to the child. At one point he said he slipped and dropped the child, but caught her before her head hit the stairs, police said, while in another version he said he shook the child 10 to 15 times, frustrated over her crying.

In all versions, he continued to say the dog also stepped on her chest after being agitated, according to trial testimony.

Last week Keintz testified that he told police he shook Alexis because he wanted to deflect authorities from taking his other daughter, Taylor, away from his wife. He testified that he never shook the child, but that he did slip on the stairs and catch the infant as her head hit his thigh.

Most of the trial centered on medical testimony with experts called by both sides to either affirm that the child died of shaken baby syndrome or to dispel the idea the child's injuries could be directly related to shaken baby syndrome.

Donahue argued that Alexis' breathing problems could have been linked to other factors, such as being born seven weeks premature or her treatment by emergency medical personnel.

"She died of a lack of oxygen, but how that lack occurred is in dispute," Donahue said, adding that the dog could have "had an impact. No one on earth knows what role that dog played."

Keintz's other daughter, Taylor, 3, also is adopted. Alexis was a twin girl born to an Arizona couple, who because of their financial situation allowed her to be adopted by Bruce and Sandra Keintz.

Keintz has been out on $1 million bond with the condition that he live with a friend and not in the home with Taylor.